First business bank account help

[MonkeyBusiness]

Can any PH'ers recommend a bank account which would provide my wife with her first business account?
Ideally free banking for the first year(?).

[Redmax]

I went to Abbey which (I believe) is free permanently. Been fine so far...

[jas xjr]

if you join up to the fsb you get free business banking for life plus other benefits

[The Moose]

i initially went with alliance and leicester. Not bad until after first year, then went downhill.

am now with abbey.

touch wood, so far so good...!!!

[V8mate]

Co-operative Bank is pretty good - free banking up front and continues to work out free unless you're running a retail business which pays in a lot of cash over the counter.

Even pays a bit of interest on your credit balance!

[anonymous-user]

Is this going to be an Internet based company? Lloyds have a business account designed for online traders.

[MonkeyBusiness]

Thanks for the help folks.
Its for nothing flash - self employed hairdresser. Just needed somewhere to deposit the cash and cheques without lots of bank charges.

[trophies]

I use hsbc, free for the first 2 years! Also if you need a card machine you can haggle the rates down alot.

Lew

[Glassman]

Join the FSB which as its own benefits; £150-200 for the year.


Free banking for life with Co-operative

[Brown and Boris]

The Moose said:

i initially went with alliance and leicester. Not bad until after first year, then went downhill.

am now with abbey.

touch wood, so far so good...!!!

I have been happy with A&L but like all big banks it is impersonal and only fine if you don't have queries and problems, when geting thr right number to cal is a problem. Their online service is good and looks pretty securure although they have a daily transfer limit of £10K which is a pain when you want to move money about at year ends/CT and VAT dates etc. The web site is set up for a much larger business, allowing differnet people to have different facilities (which makes it complex in parts) but it has worked fine for us.

[The Moose]

Brown and Boris said:

The Moose said:

i initially went with alliance and leicester. Not bad until after first year, then went downhill.

am now with abbey.

touch wood, so far so good...!!!

I have been happy with A&L but like all big banks it is impersonal and only fine if you don't have queries and problems, when geting thr right number to cal is a problem. Their online service is good and looks pretty securure although they have a daily transfer limit of £10K which is a pain when you want to move money about at year ends/CT and VAT dates etc. The web site is set up for a much larger business, allowing differnet people to have different facilities (which makes it complex in parts) but it has worked fine for us.

My experience with (all) banks is that one person raves about one particular bank, another will spit at it. I was initially impressed with them in my "free" year or 18 months or whatever the length was, but then once I left that they started charging me fees they shouldn't have (e.g. a fee for depositing cheques, yet I don't take many cheques (mainly bank transfers) and in that month hadn't taken any at all. Basically it took numerous calls/letters to get them to sort it out.

Like i said what works for one doesn't for another.

Yeah - their online system seemed good and definately designed with BIG businesses in mind.

I say stick with what you are happy with!! (hence me moving!)

Cheers

The Moose

[Zippee]

MonkeyBusiness said:

Thanks for the help folks.
Its for nothing flash - self employed hairdresser. Just needed somewhere to deposit the cash and cheques without lots of bank charges.

Exactly the same here (my girlfriend that is) we set up with our first salon and opened in October 07 - Best of luck with it.
As for banking, we use Abbey as it's totally free. As long as you don't need counter services I can't recommend them enough. Paying in is done via the cash point.